Suggestions for the Year's Study 



HISTORY D, DD. 



VASSAR COLLEGE 

1/ S _ 



" Take these hints as suggestions, not as instructions, and improve on them as 
you grow in experience." 

"Historical genius consists in an unlimited capacity for taking pains." 



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Copyright 1908 

by 

L-iicy M. Salmon. 



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SUGGESTIONS FOR THE YEAK'S STUDY 

HISTORY D, DD. 
VASSAR COLLEGE 



I. What the student brings to the elective courses in 
history. 

1. From the required course in history. 

From the subject studied: 

a bird's-eye view of Western Europe, 

an appreciation of historical developments, 

an understanding of the unity of history, 

historical prospective, 

a background for work in other subjects. 

From the study of the subject: 

ability to use books, 

to analyze material, 

to vivify history, 

to understand the difference between reading history 

and studying history, 
to appreciate the difference between history and his- 
torical record, 
to understand what the historian does in writing his- 

t° r y> 

to connect the present with the past and the past with 
the present, 

"The roots of the present lie deep in the past, 
and nothing in the past is dead to the man who 
would learn how the present comes to be what it 
is." — Stubbs. 



II. History D, DD. 

Subject. 
Object. 

Difference between a course in contemporaneous history 
and one in current topics. 

III. The Press. 

' ' An earnest man ought to understand above all other social 
things his own times." — Francis Lieber. 

' ' Read also the Reviews ; they will keep you abreast of the 
current of modern literature."— James Russell Lowell. 

" A journal or newspaper presents a transcript of current life, 
a history, a transcript of past life." — B. A. Hinsdale. 

" Bryce's American Commonwealth is essentially a work of 
history. That he deals with a set of contemporary events in- 
stead of successive ones is an accident of his subject. He has 
taken a cross section of history, instead of a longitudinal sec- 
tion." — Arthur T. Had ley. 

IV. Material with which the student works. 

Contemporaneous newspapers, 

domestic, 

foreign. 
Current magazines. 
Works of reference. 



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http://www.archive.org/details/suggestionsforye02vass 



V. Individuality of newspapers. 

External : 

Form; size ; type; illustrations; quality of paper ; color 

of ink ; place of advertisements, of telegraphic news, 

of editorials. 
Internal : 

Political bias ; economic bias ; independence ; sensa- 
tionalism. 

' ' Neutral in nothing. ' ' 

" Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur." 
" All the news that's fit to print." 
" All the news that's worth reading." 

VI. Comparison of American and European newspapers 

as regards 

general arrangement, 
advertising matter, 
editorials, 
news, 

character, 

display, 

reliability. 



VII. The newspaper as a business enterprise. 

Capital, 

mechanical, 
intellectual. 
Manufacture of paper, 
cotton rags, 
wood pulp. 

Estimated cost in timber of a year's circulation of a 
popular newspaper. 
Collection of news, 
foreign, 
domestic, 
local. 

Consult Melville E. Stone, The Work of the Asso- 
ciated Press in The Century; April-August, 1905. 
Effect of inventions on the character and the circulation of 
the newspaper, — 

steam navigation, the railroad; the telegraph, cable, 
telephone, trolley ; typewriter, lineotype, multiple 
press ; stenography ; wireless telegraphy. 
Effect of reduction of price on 
quality of paper, 
circulation. 

Industries fostered by growth of newspapers, 
manufacture of paper, 
distribution by means of 
newspaper trains, 
newsboys. 
subscription agencies, 
clipping bureaus. 
Relation of these conditions to 

the newspaper considered as historical material. 



VIII. Important collections of newspapers. 

American Antiquarian Society, 
Boston Public Iyibrary, 
Massachusetts State Library, 
State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 
See Annotated List. 

IX. History of the press. 

X. Work of eminent editors. 

Bennett, Bowles, Bryant, Buckingham, Delane, Garrison, 
Godkin, Greeley, Raymond. 



XI. Freedom of the press. 

Censorship of the press,— 

America, 

England, 

France, 

Germany, 

Russia, 

The Church of Rome. 
Ivibel laws. 
Restriction of circulation of news, 

crimes, 

domestic unhappiness, 

photographs. 

' ' incendiary literature. ' ' 

indirect limitation of freedom of press, 

ownership of press, 

economic conditions, 

Ecclesiastical conditions. 

XII. Problems of the current newspaper,— 

schools of journalism 
the endowed newspaper, 
newspaper ethics, 

G. W. Curtis, in Ars Rede Vivendi. 
the Sunday paper, 
the comic supplement, 
syndicate articles. 



XIII. The newspaper and the library. 

binding, 

advertisements, 
indexing, 
storage. 

XIV. The newspaper considered as historical material. 

Credibility. 

" You can't believe anything you read in the papers." 

" I know it's so, I read it in the paper." 
Anonymity of 

editorials, 

reviews. 
Influence of control 1))' 

individuals, 

political parties, 

stock companies. 
Appointment of editors to political office. 

XV. Power of the Press, 

' ' Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a 
thousand bayonets. " — Proverb. 

"Give me but the liberty of the press, and I will give to the 
minister a venal House of Peers — I will give him a corrupt and 
servile House of Commons — I will give him the full swing of 
the patronage of office — I will give him the whole host of minis- 
terial influence — I will give him all the power that place can 
confer upon him to purchase up submission and overawe resist- 
ance ; and yet armed with the liberty of the press, I will go 
forth undismayed : I will attack the mighty fabric he has reared, 
with that mightier engine : I will shake down from its height 
corruption, and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuses it was 
meant to shelter."— Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Hansard De- 
bates, February 6, 1810, p. 341. 



XVI. Relation of 
History D, DD, to 
other Courses in 
History. 



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